Known pumps are substantially constituted by a supporting frame with which means for locking the cylindrical body of a syringe and means of the linear automated type for actuating the sliding of the plunger of the syringe are associated.
An electronic circuit controls and actuates the actuation means in order to dispense the drug contained in the syringe according to an infusion program (time, flow-rate, speed etc.) that can be set from the outside by a health operator by means of a keypad and a display.
These known types of pump are not free from drawbacks, including the fact that if the fluid to be infused is constituted by a plurality of components they do not allow them to mix adequately as required.
Currently, mixing is performed manually by health operators, who shake the syringe into which the components of the fluid have been introduced, with consequent disadvantageous labor costs and long execution times and producing a homogenization that is imperfect and inconstant since it depends on the experience and dexterity of the operators.
Another drawback of known pumps is that they practically cannot be used to infuse fluids that contain microbubbles of air or gas, such as for example the contrast media used in imaging diagnostic methods, such as in particular echocontrast imaging.
The expression “echocontrast imaging” designates a sonogram that uses contrast media and utilizes the reflection of ultrasound by microbubbles entrained together with the contrast medium.
The infusion of these fluids must in fact follow immediately their mixing in order to prevent the microbubbles from distributing unevenly inside them, and therefore to prevent the fractions of fluid that are infused in succession from containing too many or too few microbubbles, compromising the quality of the sonograms.
For this reason, the operator assigned to mixing them manually also then injects them manually immediately thereafter into the line for infusion to a patient; the time required to prepare a known type of pump would in fact eliminate the effects of mixing.
Currently, therefore, the mixing and infusion of these fluids that contain microbubbles of air or gas, as well as the immediate successive infusion of a physiological solution, are entirely manual, and this accordingly entails a further disadvantageous increase in labor costs and in execution times as well as inevitable and unpredictable inaccuracies and errors in execution due to the experience and dexterity of the operators.
Moreover, it should be noted that the contrast media of this type have high intrinsic costs, and therefore their incorrect mixing and/or their incorrect infusion, such as to compromise for example the quality of the resulting sonogram and prevent correct diagnosis, entail a waste of material that is disadvantageously onerous.